The Rundown: Scoot McNairy Is The Forrest Gump Of Peak TV

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items will vary, as will the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest. The important thing is that it’s Friday and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — All Scoot everything

The new season of True Detectivekicked off earlier this week with a two-episode, two-hour premiere. So far, we’ve seen creepy dolls and missing kids and overhead shots of the region and multiple timelines and hard-drinking cops who have demons and a lot of other things we saw in the first season. Mahershala Ali is there and he’s great, as usual. Stephen Dorff is there and he’s pretty good, too. We’ve been over all of this, though. Right now, there are other pressing matters to get to. Like, for example, the fact that Scoot McNairy has popped up in yet another big fancy prestige drama.

You know Scoot. You should know him if you don’t. He’s a terrific actor with a really terrific mustache who has a habit of showing up on really great television shows. His most notable project is probably Halt and Catch Fire, in which he played a brilliant but troubled computer programmer named Gordon and if you are one of the 25 people in America who watched this show you are probably sniffling and starting to cry right now. Gordooooo, the light, whyyyyyyy, etc. etc. etc.

(If you have not seen Halt and Catch Fire, please consider addressing this, if only to get me to stop badgering you about it. It’s a beautiful show. You can skip the first season and dig through the plot on Wikipedia if you’re pressed for time.)

Once that show ended, my guy started showing up everywhere. Wanna see him take his mustache to the Wild West? No problem, he was in Godless with Jeff Daniels and Sam Waterston. Wanna watch a show and spend the whole time like “Jesus Mighty, why does this narrator sound so familiar? It’s killing me. Come on”? Great news, that was him in the most recent season of Narcos and he’ll be back — face and all this time! — for the next go-round. Wanna see a woman named Nikki Swango murder him by pushing an air conditioner out of a window and onto his head a few floors below? I mean, that’s a weird request, but yup, it happened in Fargo.

FX

And now he’s in True Detective, too, as the father of the missing children I mentioned earlier. I hope he keeps this up, this dropping in once or twice a year on shows I watch once. Let him play an assassin on Killing Eve. Cast him as an FBI agent on Better Call Saul or a sleazy network executive on Succession. Hell, slip him into the final season of Game of Thrones without telling anyone. Just let him be the Night King now. That guy could use a mustache anyway.

There’s only one thing that could throw a wrench in this plan of mine: Scoot has a role in Tarantino’s upcoming Manson movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and if that works out well enough he might go all Tinseltown on us. He’ll be too busy to show up in all my favorite shows, like the Forrest Gump of Peak TV. It would be great for him but truly devastating for me.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — John Wick killed someone with a dang book

Well, guess what. It’s time to talk about the trailer for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, a movie that I want coursing through my veins immediately, a movie that features Asia Kate Dillon from Billions and Jason Mantzoukas from every comedy you like as assassins, a movie that is quickly approaching Mission: Impossible levels of excess punctuation in its title. (A colon and a dash? In this economy? Sheesh.)

But first, let’s glance again at the description.

Legendary hitman John Wick must fight his way out of New York when a $14 million contract on his life makes him the target of the world’s top assassins.

Hell yes. Also, I love that the number they set is $14 million. It’s almost, like, charming, right? They could have been ridiculous about it and had someone shout “$250 million for John Wick’s Head!” But no, $14 million. That doesn’t even get you one year of Bismack Biyombo. Hey, speaking of very large NBA players…

Man, that is great. Imagine getting killed with a book. I mean, it’s one thing to get killed with a pencil, as John Wick has done to numerous people on numerous occasions. At least pencils are sharp. But a book to the throat? No thanks. No thank you at all. But that’s not all…

Lionsgate

“Boss, I have bad news. John Wick killed Kyle.”

“Ah, dammit. Did he shoot him?”

“No, he was out of bullets.”

“What then? Pencil?”

“No.”

“Book?”

“No.”

“Okay, I give up.”

“He threw the empty gun at him, sir.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah.”

I am extremely here for John Wick killing goons via unconventional methods. At another point in the trailer, we get a live action version of that paparazzi shot of him killing a motorcycle assassin while riding a horse. That’s something I would talk about more, right now, if not for this…

Lionsgate

Let me tell you this. Very few things are worth marching through the damn desert in a black suit. Very few. So few that I can’t think of any right now other than to meet Assassin Halle Berry and her pair of Assassin Dogs in a last-ditch attempt to save my hide from the world’s greediest assassins, which is what my beloved Jonathan Wick appears to be doing here.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did I say “Assassin Dogs”? That feels like something that requires documentable evidence. Well, here you go.